I will update this list with links to the other posts as I put them out. For now though, I give you Part 2.

Before I played this game, many have told me that this is the worst title out of the trilogy. The reasons were not explained to me, but I would argue that this game is an improvement of the first installment of the trilogy. This by no means signifies that Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is perfect, but I do not believe it is nearly as bad as what I have been told.

Story

The story of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is much more prominent throughout the game than its predecessor with a backstory being told by Luminoth Lore. Samus Aran has been hired by the Galactic Federation to investigate the disappearance of a marine squad on the planet of Aether. As she enters the planet's unstable atmosphere, however, her gunship is struck down by lightning and forces an emergency landing into a cave on the planet's surface. As Samus explores her surroundings, she discovers the remains of the missing marines along with several dark creatures that had brutally murdered them and have the ability to control their corpses. She also discovers the evil and sadistic Dark Samus, the Metroid Prime reborn after having its DNA merge with Samus's Phazon Suit in the previous game.

What a twist!

After the brief encounter, Samus has most of her suit's abilities stolen by the dark creatures, the Ing, and finds a temple with a Luminoth waiting for her, U-Mos. The Luminoth are the moth-like inhabitants of Aether and U-Mos is the last surviving Sentinel who was charged with protecting the planet's energy, the Light of Aether. He pleads for Samus's help, revealing that after the catastrophic landing of a mysterious phazon meteor, the planet's energy was split in half with the creation of Dark Aether, the homeworld of the Ing on an opposite dimension. Both planets are unstable due to the split and Samus must retrieve the missing energy from Dark Aether's temples in order to restore Aether's stability and destroy the aggressive Ing. She must also deal with Dark Samus who seems hellbent on gathering phazon to increase its power.

Save us, Samus Aran. You're our only hope.

Gameplay

This game's gameplay mechanics are not all that different than Metroid Prime. It is a first person shooter with Samus using her Power Beam that can be upgraded with different shot variations such as the Dark Beam or Light Beam, her visor which can be used for scanning and finding hidden secrets, and other suit abilities like the Morph Ball. Enemies were not all that new either. Despite their difference in appearance they behaved like some of the enemies encountered on Tallon IV and had some of the same weaknesses. It was enough for me to utilize the scan to learn more about fighting them though.

Oh a Sheego- ... No, no, these are called Grenchlers.

Aether itself is divided into four areas: Temple Grounds, Agon Wastes, Torvus Bog, and Sanctuary Fortress. Now it does seem to me that the game was a little better on back tracking since the map itself seemed a bit smaller and had no areas that only allowed you to move forward. The elevator cutscenes were also much shorter and tried not to ruin the immersion (Moving up on improvements!). I will say, however, that the reason for being better about backtracking might be that the game has two similar but separate overworlds, Aether and Dark Aether. Dark Aether's air and atmosphere is harmful. One can die by just staying out in the open and doing nothing. There are also plenty of Ing and dark enemy variations everywhere, so Samus can die pretty easily if you don't know what you're doing. There are light crystals scattered around that can heal health, so it's not completely unfair.

Think you can handle this world???

In Metroid Prime, missiles were the only weapons that could be exhausted of their ammo. In this sequel, the upgraded beams could also be exhausted. You could actually run out of Dark, Light, and Annihilator Beam ammo. I loved this. It is a fair constraint that forces the player to be smarter about their decisions rather than just mindlessly spamming the strongest weapon in the game. There are various ways to get ammo back, so one can't really complain about this.

This game also has fast travel... but it is unlocked near the very end of the game. Might as well have just left it out in the first place. I didn't have a big enough use for it at that point. I curse this game's timing of this. That was my top complaints about the first game and we don't get it until we practically have to fight the final boss. I just... it's not that hard to... *sigh*.

Bosses

If you've read my Metroid Prime review, you'll know that I found most of the bosses to be way too easy. Fixed, rectified, and moving on in this one. The bosses in this sequel are not impossibly hard, but at least they actually inflicted damage and frequently. Some of them, such as the Boost Guardian or Chykka, posed as an actual challenge while one of them, the Spider Guardian, was almost downright unfair. That'll be a story for another time, but this time I genuinely felt like I came, I saw, and I conquered. My thanks to Nintendo and Retro Studios for the great improvements on boss fights. Bosses that actually exert their dominance! I will say that Dark Samus was easier than expected though.

Prepare your anus, Chykka's sting is ready.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is alright. Just alright. The Deathmatch is nothing too special or revolutionary, even for a game from 2004. It is entertaining if you are willing to look past a few flaws such as glitches and the ability to cheat someone out of a kill by committing suicide (And that is BIG in the world of flaws). Get a couple of friends together and it'll be a blast, but it has no competitive value as an FPS. It may have had a very Halo-esque feel to it (Among other things in the franchise), but that wasn't enough to help.

It'd be perfect if it wasn't so bad. Shame.

Once again, despite the word of many saying this game is the black sheep of the trilogy, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes greatly improved on some of the flawed mechanics of its predecessor. The story was much more prominent than just relying on Luminoth Lore, bosses were more of a challenge, more fair constraints were made to make the game more difficult, and the backtracking was nowhere near as bad. On the other hand, multiplayer could have used a bit more polish and fast travel was embarrassingly useless.